Good morning everyone and thanks for joining us for another installment of Android Amusements! This week’s game is something Jeremy Hill has raved about before, but now that Plague Inc. is available for Android as well as iOS, I figured we should revisit it.Plague Inc. is a disease simulation. First, you choose a difficulty level. You create a disease that starts out as a bacteria, bio-weapon, fungus, nano-virus, neurax worm, parasite, prion or virus. (Spoiler: The virus is my favorite because it mutates so often, even though that does make it a tad more difficult to manage!) Your goal is to wipe out the human race. To do so, you have to manage the virus, deciding how infectious, severe and lethal it is. You also determine what symptoms it has, if it has any special abilities and how it spreads. Finally, you can decide how adaptable it is and how it spreads. Basically, the longer the disease lasts, the more DNA points you can earn to place into those categories to make it harder to spot and stronger so it can’t be discovered and cured. You have to be careful, as eventually governments will take notice and research teams will come to try and cure it.

It’s interesting because there are so many factors to take into account with Plague Inc.. Each disease proceeds differently and there are a lot of different options to choose when upgrading. There are tons of symptoms, for example. Basically, each game will play differently, even if you’re playing as the same kind of disease. You have to be careful. You don’t want a disease to be too severe or lethal, then people will realize what’s happening quickly and develop a cure. If you aren’t severe or lethal enough, then you won’t get DNA points to make your disease better. Not to mention you want to pick symptoms that are similar to known diseases as camoflauge.

Now, let’s get into Plague Inc.‘s problems. This game will crash on you. No question about it. I’ve had it on my tablet for about 40 minutes now and I’ve experienced nine crashes. They just happen without any explanation. You could make a decision, start to move forward and bam! Make sure you save often, probably after every major decision, because Plague Inc. will crash. I’m playing the free version, so this could be an issue unique to the free-to-play version.

Also, you have to pay to access a feature of Plague Inc. you’ll be begging for after about 15 minutes. If you want to fast forward and move to the next stage of the epidemic, you have to pay $0.99. It’s pretty inexpensive, so that’s a pro. Plus it removes ads. Still, some people don’t like paying for things so there’s that. Still, I think it’s a small amount to pay for a feature you’ll use. You can also pay to unlock various kinds of diseases early (for $0.99 each again), but you can earn those by playing so you’re better off just… playing.

Here’s one last “pro” to close out this Plague Inc. summary! Ndemic Creations has pledged to keep supporting the app and is planning on adding more diseases, updates and such to keep the game relevant. So there you go – you have a new app to look at that will keep growing on you.